Leading scientists worldwide delivered a striking dose of reality to the United Nations on Sunday: it’s “becoming inevitable” that countries will miss the ambitious target they set eight years ago for limiting the warming of the Earth.
The ominous estimate points to the growing likelihood that global warming will shoot past 1.5 degrees Celsius before the end of this century, inflicting what scientists describe as an overwhelming toll from intensifying storms, drought and heat on people and the economy. It also injects an urgent message into global climate talks in Dubai, where the debate over ramping down fossil fuels is set to flare over the next two weeks.
Surpassing the temperature threshold — even temporarily — would be a major blow to the international Paris climate agreement from 2015, which called for nations to keep global temperatures well within 2 degrees Celsius of their preindustrial levels, and within 1.5 degrees if at all possible. The findings come amid climate talks that for the first time are focused on taking stock of whether almost 200 nations are meeting that goal. Early indications offer a bleak picture.
Looking forward to the water wars when we can all ask ourselves, was it worth it.
It’ll depend on who you ask: The obscenely wealthy will still say yes and the people they’ve been fucking over forever will probably disagree except perhaps about 39% of the normal population which is apparently too stupid to question or think critically about literally anything.
Yew hav bin purminintly band frum c/Conservative
39 percent? You’re quite the optimist.
It was a joke about the latest brand of fascism that’s been popping up in the US over the last decade or so, but I probably should’ve said “at least 39%”.
God, I know too many old liberals who still treat the economy as the end goal.
We brought value to the shareholders!
The United States and China will be the biggest winners of climate change. The nation’s around the equator will be the biggest losers.
Don’t be so sure. We in the US are already struggling with refugees at our border; that problem will intensify exponentially as warming increases.
Tell me why this will not end in a massacre? The Western nations are already electing fascist leaders with a minor refugee crisis. When the situation worsens, borders will be closed, people will be shot or otherwise “taken care of”. I wish it weren’t so, but with our history and current trajectory, why is it not going to end like that?
I think there’s a pretty good chance you’re right.
The “better-off nations” are about to face wave after wave of climate refugees that will make recent war refugee crises look like casual tourism. Y’all think they will be welcomed by food and shelter or barbed wire and watchtowers?
There’s like 5 billions of people not living in Europe or in the good parts of China. I guess there’s going to be a lot of space in the currently frozen lands of Siberia
Exactly my point. And it’s not going to be easypeasy in the better off nations either. Just look at what a ship accident in the Suez canal did to European goods. What China’s covid problems did to global availability of goods. We had to worry about food problems because of the war in Ukraine. Our economy is global and fragile, because there are no redundancies.
The Western world will suffer as well, even if they close all borders and manage to keep people out of it. Why would the rest of the world produce for us if they have other problems to worry about?
Devils advocate here, but wouldnt that be the best case scenario for the planet?
The border issue will increase to the point the Conservatives will rule no one can come in. They will permanently close the U.S. Land Border.
Closed borders hasn’t stopped determined folks. There will always be ways to get across, legal or not.
Russia, Canada, and Alaska will be the biggest winners
We should grow gills like Kevin Costner.
I think the microplastics will kill us off before then.
This year is currently at 1.4c; the last 3 months, generally the coolest months, have been near 1.7c.
why are they the coolest months? northern hemisphere sure but aren’t we overall closer to the sun planet wise. I would think northern hemisphere summer would be the coolest.
The Southern hemisphere’s temperatures in winter (jun-sep) aren’t as cold as the northern hemisphere ones, so it makes sense the global average coldest temperatures are when the northern hemisphere is in winter .
For reference, only the Southern tip of south America gets snow in winter in the souther hemisphere
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Annual_Average_Temperature_Map.png
Still don’t see how it matters given the whole globe. I would think globally being closer to the sun would be all that matters.
The northern hemisphere has more land, so I would guess that affects how much sunlight gets absorbed
The ocean absorbs a ton. It’s one reason the ice caps melting is so bad. Ice reflects 90% while water absorbs 90%.
This is key. We might not notice it as quickly as on land, but water holds so much more energy than air. A warm ocean has a lot more and longer effect than warm land, even tho people are inclined to downplay it. The amount of heat required to increase the ocean with 1 degree is staggering.
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It’ll settle somewhere around 3° to 5°, because that’s the point where the global economy collapses irrecoverably. There’s no other way that we’re going to get out of this.
Unless somewhere on the way to +3°C there’s a tipping point that will lead to runaway heating, then all bets are off and +10°C is on the table.
Also, at some point we’ve actually burnt all the oil. So there is an upper bound, unless it triggers a runaway.
Well you can also make organic compounds for combustion from plants or directly from the constitutive monomers, so theoretically… we can go on after oil!
Yes, but this requires energy input, so it isn’t as efficient as just using that energy directly.
The ominous estimate points to the growing likelihood that global warming will shoot past 1.5 degrees Celsius before the end of this century
Current estimate points to reaching +1.5 this year.
For one year, and there’s a debate going on in climate science because of how much you can extrapolate for a single year. The +1.5C they’re talking about would be sustained for the long run.
If the average drops back down to +0.9°C or below in 2024, I’ll eat my hat.
You’ll probably have to eat it any way, because of the famine.
Was gunna put /s but then I started to question myself.
its possible. our southern summer is lining up to be not as warm as initially expected so there’s a chance
(butterfly meme) Is this progress?
